Home is where the heart is Mbwiti is a term used to refer to people who leave their places of origin in search of greener pastures in the city or urban areas. They then get too comfortable and do not go back home. This has become a common phenomenon in Namibia where the youth especially, are reluctant to go back home for holidays. There are various reasons as to why people choose to not go home. Some reasons are justifiable whilst some are really just not defensible. There are those who have to work during the holidays because the nature of their job requires them to, but there are others who do not go home because they have now become accustomed with the lifestyle in the city and no longer feel like they can cope with the village life.People have learned to be on their own and are okay with it. The reality is we need company more often. Our spirits have been on a low and we are flirting with darkness and its ambiences. We must seek light and not be caught up in being comforted by the family we have created on social media. We must make time and spend quality time with our families this festive season. We spend the whole year working hard it is only right that we take some time off and spend this with our loved ones. Our society is going through moral decay because people no longer go home to strengthen their relationships with their folks. It is believed that families who spend quality time together are strong families. They communicate better and share a sense of belonging.
One of the strongest aspects of Namibians, or just Africans in general, is the concept that everyone has a village. Despite the fact that many people do not live in their village, and maybe have never lived there, almost every one of us has one. Our relatives live there. We speak the same mother tongue as our fellow village people. No matter what happens to you in the city you can always return to the village empty-handed and start from scratch.
We have become so comfortable with how things are done in the city - which is not wrong at all - but we should not lose our roots, and we can help preserve our cultures and traditions by going home from time to time, especially during the December holidays. It just dawned on me the other day that we never really run from anything but ourselves. Little do we know wherever we go we take ourselves with. Because we do not go back home to remind ourselves who we are we make it easy to be put under the illusion that even the music that the mainstream media feeds us with defines who we are. We rarely listen to music that narrates stories about who we are. I am guilty of this too. We need to spend time home and learn about our different histories and preserve that culture, from the food, music, language and even dress code. We should embrace who we are and take pride in that.
We cannot know all the above-mentioned elements about ourselves if we are not reminded. Not a lot is documented about the Namibian culture. Thus it leaves us with oral history as one of the most effective ways we can get to know our backgrounds. So let us go home this festive season and have those lengthy dialogues with our elders and learn as much as we can. Let us go and help out our parents. Namibia is growing but the villages are being left behind because we are not going back to the rural areas to cultivate the same growth that the urban masses are experiencing.
Awkwardly, urbanisation has started to create a stigma around the Namibian villages as being backward or not advanced. The term village is even starting to be regarded as derogatory to the people who consider themselves “cool” and are huge consumers of the western cultures. It is difficult in the villages because not a lot of homesteads have running water and electricity. This might be the reason why people are reluctant to go back home because they do not want to go through these hardships. We should develop the routine of going back home not to show off but to rather inspire the ones we have left behind. The future of culture, language and Namibian villages is bleak. Let us acknowledge that tradition carries an important cultural identification and can be used to unite us as Namibians. So let us go back to our roots and preserve our culture.
michael@namibiansun.com